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Hi everyone,
I’m looking for some advice on whether it is worth submitting an appeal under ACCA mitigating circumstances, based on exam-day technical issues.
During my AAA exam at a test centre, I experienced a series of problems, including:
A delay of around 1 hour before the exam started due to network issues at the centre
Severe keyboard input lag at the start of the exam, which caused repeated retyping and loss of time
A system restart after Question 1, followed by a forced system update that took around 30 minutes (timer paused, but concentration disrupted)
In the final 10–15 minutes, the computer completely froze and then failed to reboot
I was moved to another computer, but when I logged back in, only ~2 minutes remained and the timer had not been paused during the crash
My entire answer to Question 3 (25 marks) had been wiped and showed as “not answered”
As a result, I lost a full question and also the opportunity to review and improve Questions 1 and 2 in the final minutes.
I ended up scoring 39%, which is significantly below my performance in mocks and practice exams, where I was consistently scoring much higher.
My concern is whether the loss of the entire Question 3 answer and the unpaused time during the crash would actually be taken into account unless I formally appeal.
Has anyone been in a similar situation, and do you think this is strong enough grounds to submit an appeal / mitigating circumstances application? Any insight into how ACCA typically treats cases like this would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
Welcome to the Opentuition forums. I believe you have missed your opportunity. Please see the following-
https://www.accaglobal.com/uk/en/student/getting-started/important-dates.html
“You should upload evidence via myACCA, along with your mitigating circumstances submission.
If you have any additional evidence to upload at a later date, you must submit it by the mitigating circumstances closing date. We are unable to accept any evidence provided after this date”.
Thank you for the responses. Just to clarify, I am not referring to submitting mitigating circumstances, as these were already submitted via the ACCA portal within the deadline.
My question relates to whether it would be worthwhile to submit an appeal after results, given that my final exam answer was completely wiped due to a technical/network failure at the test centre, and my final mark was significantly lower than my consistent mock exam performance.
I am therefore seeking guidance specifically on the appeal process and its viability, rather than the mitigating circumstances submission itself.
I recommend you put it behind you move on. There’s nothing to gain in postponing, see for example here https://opentuition.com/topic/urgent-please-please-help-failed-both-fr-aa-at-49
As a former AAA examiner I can tell you it is not possible to give marks to an answer that doesn’t exist. And as I have explained on other posts, mitigation can award only a few marks, it cannot scale up total marks awareed by the marker by a proportion or factor.
I should also clarify that the appeal process does not follow on from the issue of results First you have to apply for an admin review. Only after that can you appeal. I have been answering posts about admin reviews here for nearly 8 years, and not once has a student reported a change in outcome.
Thank you for your response. It is quite an unfortunate situation, as I had hoped to pass all of my ACCA exams without failing; however, due to a technical issue, I was unable to do so.
I am disappointed that ACCA has chosen to issue only a £30 credit rather than providing a full refund for the exam.
Nevertheless, I will begin preparing for the resit.
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